Sugar-coated, but deals could turn sour

FOOTBALL stardom has always been a risky business.

Jordan Henderson made the switch from Sunderland to Liverpool last week []

A life in the limelight – but an afterlife in the shadows is always just one serious injury away.

So who can blame the current crop of young stars who are being bought and sold for enormous sums for reaching out to grab fortune and fame at the earliest opportunity?

Phil Jones, 19, is the latest to be lined up. A £20 million move from Blackburn Rovers to Manchester United should be finalised, after a hiccup, this week.

Yet he has been a first-team player for little more than a year.

He made his debut against Chelsea in March 2010 and has started just seven Premier League games for Rovers. Now he is set to be one of the most expensive teenage players in the country.

He follows Jordan Henderson, 20, another £20m buy, who made the switch from Sunderland to Liverpool last week.

An afterlife in the shadows is always just one serious injury away

Henderson broke into the Sunderland side in 2009-10 with only a handful of appearances and a loan spell at Coventry behind him. So after barely two full seasons as a Sunderland first-teamer, he is in the £20m club too.

Perhaps even more remarkably, Andy Carroll moved from Newcastle to Liverpool in January for £35m after less than half a season as a Premier League regular.

Connor Wickham, Ipswich’s precocious 18-year-old
forward, is just about old enough to vote, but could soon be signing
£10m transfer forms. Sunderland have apparently made an offer for him.
Liverpool are hovering.

Whatever happened to the
old-fashioned notion of bright, young players serving their time –
let’s call it an apprenticeship – before being valued so highly?

Even Wayne Rooney hit 15 Premier League goals and served two full seasons for Everton before his move to Old Trafford in 2004.

Go
back a generation or so and Paul Gascoigne served Newcastle for five
full seasons before his first major transfer to Tottenham in 1990.

If
the young Gazza were playing today, he would have been away before his
best mate Jimmy had grown the second of his five bellies.

At Sunderland, from where Henderson has just decamped, they had the brightest young defender in Britain in the early Seventies.

But
Colin Todd served – and duly captained – Sunderland for five years
before moving for big money to win club honours and England caps with
Brian Clough at Derby. Jones might reflect on that as he ponders life at
United.

But
only a few short weeks ago, he said: “The great thing with Jordan is
that his father and Jordan himself are level-headed enough to
realise that the worst thing that could happen is he goes for big – huge
– money then doesn’t play for 18 months and sits on the bench. There
will be a time when he goes, unfortunately. But in the meantime, no.”

That meantime turned out to be no time at all.

So
why the rush? Well UEFA president Michel Platini’s demand for more
home-grown talent in the Premier League has more than a little to do
with it.

So when Jones spoke with Sir Alex
Ferguson over his proposed transfer, the small talk about his
experience and memories was probably just that – very small.

No doubt Ferguson will have reassured him that everything is waiting for him in a long career at United.

We shall see.

There
is a good chance that such gambles – even on kids rated racing
certainties – will lead to cries of, ‘You’re fired’, for those bosses
who act in haste.